Name: Sam Čermák—Abnormal Peripheries: Disappearance in the work of Ľuba Lauffová
Start: 2026-04-15T17:30:00+01:00
End: 2026-04-15T19:00:00+01:00
Location: Queen Mary University of London, ArtsOne, RR2

$Sam \u010cerm\u00e1k\u2014Abnormal Peripheries: Disappearance in the work of \u013duba Lauffov\u00e1$

Quorum welcomes Sam Čermák for a discussion and Q&A to mark the publication of his new book on Czech/Slovak performance art of the 1960s–70s
About this Event

When reading through the histories of Czechoslovak performance, one can easily notice a suspicious lack of women. Hell, when reading through the histories of performance more broadly, one can easily notice a suspicious lack of Slovak artists! Indeed, the narratives of women artists from Slovak performance histories have disappeared through a process of double peripherisation—if Slovak artists registered for global (but really mostly Western European and North American) scholars at all, women were never part of the conversation. In this talk, Sam Čermak trace the works of Ľuba Lauffová to argue that she pioneered body art within the region, examining how the process of historisation and theorisation doesn’t so much erase certain bodies as disappear them, failing to register their works in the first place.

Lauffová’s performance work has been largely under-theorised and has instead been analysed as photography. While women were officially on par with men in Socialist Slovakia, in real terms they were weighed down by the double workload of labourer and housewife, were not expected or acknowledged as capable of producing performance art, and their bodies were gendered as caregivers and mothers in official, state-sanctioned events. Likewise, Lauffová’s body-art works have been overwritten by more dominant histories of male artists’ body art. This talk, based on Čermak's recent book, recontextualises Lauffová as a body artist within the social and cultural history of women’s bodies in Socialist Slovakia to argue that, instead of trying to include women in art-historical canons, scholars and art professionals should strive to create alternative structures for telling performance histories.

Dr Sam Čermák (he/they) is currently a Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory at the Edinburgh College of Arts, University of Edinburgh. His work analyses peripheral and dissident performance practices. His recent book Abnormal Peripheries: Slovak and Czech Performance Art in the 1960s and 70s, published by Manchester University Press, argues for a localised approach to performance and art historiography.

More details tba. This is a free, hybrid seminar open to all. Please register your attendance to help us plan the event.